


Written On Air

by Thimblerig



Category: Original Work, Poetry & Literature - General
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Gen, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: I warm up for podfic by reciting poetry, and some of it came out quite nice. Posting for posterity. (Some of it is a bit silly - please don't have any expectations of profundity here. But I had fun :-) )
Comments: 15
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

****

**1\. Fa La La Lily (The Forest River)**

_Fa la la lily, the leaf and the lily  
The river is dreaming, and gleaming her water  
A daughter to mountains..._

(This found life in a Tolkien fanfic. Fandom is like that.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UM3eJNwgU4FD6N1OCAeWSe6H5_BXg2l0/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**2\. Sunday Morning**

_Listen. Last night I heard a bird call others out of shadow..._

(I have actually been in a formal poetry class, and this is one of the progeny of that time. We were working on including the formal elements of elegies, so fair warning.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UNepKlniLIg2ZtEP0BFvo-jjf_J-r_4q/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

****3\. The Merry Sweary Lullaby (Now Is The Time When Evening Falls)** **

_... Go to sleep, my little lamb,  
For you dear love, I'd give a - (cough)_

(This also happened in a poetry class but, off the books as it were. The teacher would probably have been v. disappointed if he'd ever seen this one.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VgK7-6h8xPqFqk9SsArErh8V17y1CcQr/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

I regret nothiiiiiing...

******4\. Flutterby** ** **

_Flutterby, butterfly  
Flut and flit, ignore the bitter  
Tang of thyme, but be a taster  
Singing rhymes of sweet disaster..._

(Just a bit of fluff. Fun to say aloud.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aunPohH--oM6DlCw72V2Ck8EgcNv-fTp/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

******5\. The Windhover (Gerard Manley Hopkins)** ** **

_I caught this morning morning's minion, king-_   
_dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding_   
_Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding_   
_High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing_   
_In his ecstasy!..._

(I like the classics.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aiFNY14rzJsCIFYga-y_gDvJuFT75sDf/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *


	2. Chapter 2

**6\. Night Song**

_Drink down the moon, she desires this  
And dances, scattering tart sweat drops..._

(So one year I did NaNoWriMo, threw this in for a bit of filler/scene colour, and then ended up reworking it with, like, obsessive attention to the assonance and plosives. True story. It's only six lines long...)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gZB3OtO_LQ6v1euanaYaYCaYlYQpMW2S/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**7\. Young Gilgamesh**

Please don't ask. I have no explanations.

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kBuUZvHOv6JdORI4MhHSAuQqLS4rlB73/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

****8\. Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus (Francis Brett Young)** **

_Arthur is gone. Tristam in Careol  
Sleeps with a broken sword, and Iseult sleeps  
Beside him..._

An old favourite, and fun to recite. (It's a simple abab quatrain structure but there's so much enjambment that you'd never think it to hear.) In the interests of disclosure, I did leave off a stanza near the end, because it kills the energy, when read aloud, stone dead. Sorry, Mr Young: Artist's Privilege.

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mY6sPc9F11r-rVyfTgSWpncuh5VqJgh6/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

******9\. Overheard On A Saltmarsh (Harold Monroe)** ** **

_Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?  
_ _Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?  
_ _Give them me.  
_ _No._

Another old favourite. I had far too much fun with the goblin voice

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lOBGO4PA53Dm8e0q3jCQdrlEwFMQGTYX/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**10\. Sonnet 138: When My Love Swears (William Shakespeare)**

_When my love swears that she is made of truth,  
__I do believe her, though I know she lies..._ _.._

(I like the classics.)

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mLBP-T9B3MwWfvioA8lcHHo6CD6SsHJA/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *


	3. Chapter 3

**11\. Modern Beauty (Arthur Symons)**

_I AM the torch, she saith, and what to me  
If the moth die of me? I am the flame  
Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see  
Beauty..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vizjSqd2KyLtfZDhghcDpvxWkXO-ttIS/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**12\. Song of the Stygian Naiades (Thomas Lovell Beddoes)**

_Proserpine may pull her flowers,  
Wet with dew or wet with tears,  
Red with anger, pale with fears,  
Is it any fault of ours,  
If Pluto be an amorous king,  
And comes home nightly, laden,  
Underneath his broad bat-wing,  
With a gentle, mortal maiden?_

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1weTS9KzHn1aMhKNEiyoNxegfL2DgU5jx/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**13\. The Expiration (John Donne)**

_So, so breake off this last lamenting kisse,  
Which sucks two soules, and vapours Both away..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18s_k98SxUX6uGIE7KEWxRdkpeXQnW6et/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**14\. I Saw A Strange Creature (tr. Kevin Crossley-Holland)**

_I saw a strange creature,  
A bright ship of the air beautifully adorned,  
Bearing away plunder beneath her horns,  
Fetching it home from foray_

I like how Crossley-Holland kept some of the rhythms of the original Anglo-Saxon

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sk7xj00WYkq22j0eV3qFWj6yceOVG0ep/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**15\. Cobwebs**

_She's up every morning with the birds_  
_and brings me tea that's pure,_  
_cold, tapwater..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ac60uK_dT2r0ouIw7dPvC8j9SsYwN4Pw/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *


	4. Chapter 4

**16 The Helmsman’s Prayer (Lord Dunsany)**

_To whatever god may hear.  
  
Wherever there be sailors whether of river or sea: whether their way be dark or whether through storm: whether their peril be of beast or of rock..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Flhrp06tu6T6EY2TLLHjhRUVU1N8Fx2s/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**17 Code Poem For The French Resistance (Leo Marks)**

_The life that I have  
Is all that I have,  
And the life that I have is yours..._

This was written by Leo Marks on the death of his fiancee. Part of his work for the SOE involved giving field agents poem keys for them to encrypt messages without needing paraphernalia. (They weren't ideal, but that's another story.) He gave this one to Violet Szabo. She died in service.

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SyLND7EXxu3tLTYkbIRa-p-2D9Z0TOhj/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**18 The Bailey Beareth The Bell Away (Anon)**

_The maidens came when I was in my mother's bower  
I had all that I would..._

It's just such a weird, vivid poem, that I'm still not sure I understand.

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TMgJcWBFh2HoFP-EIDD86hioOgKtmVI0/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**19 Endymion Prologue (John Keats)**

_A thing of beauty is a joy forever  
Its loveliness increases..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lg9RxG-Feer1jQCCW1gYqr2CRu9gqoV4/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**20 Sonnet 29: When In Disgrace (William Shakespeare)**

_When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,  
I all alone beweep my outcast state..._

(I still like the classics.)

__

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sr6jzfwRlA55iqZlWibAOeqBF1YWO37p/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

__


	5. Chapter 5

**21 Counsels to a Young Poet (Herbert Palmer)**

_Let there be singing, and the strings of singing  
Let there be ease and light and captivation..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/11tmYpFC9652e79WU61Y-c4iPtHTeeJil/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**22 The Phantom-Wooer (Thomas Lovell Beddoes)**

_A ghost, that loved a lady fair,  
Ever in the starry air  
Of midnight at her pillow stood..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qrmIzJaZAWBX9vyW9l0fiwLMMjr_Tsqd/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**23 I Saw A Peacock (Anon)**

_I saw a peacock with a fiery tail  
I saw a comet drop down blazing hail..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/11wpl4pzrxroZ_KOrfJpa71tNppN7EA9y/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**24 from The Wasteland (T S Elliot)**

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images_

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/11zwbzYmBIGOPPpLn-VHwUQ3KOMtJwTj2/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**25 The Song of Wandering Aengus (William Butler Yeats)**

_I went out to the hazel wood,  
Because a fire was in my head..._

__

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ZTJd8CGeDNePD2rNZ1QqMcm4Q8ZxWJC/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

__


	6. Chapter 6

**26\. The Stolen Child (William Butler Yeats)**

_Come away, O human child!  
To the waters and the wild  
With a faery, hand in hand,  
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LwVv6Bj3jgvkDy8mCGdelkvOoG0g2c8r/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**27\. Response (Mary Ursula Bethell)**

_When you wrote your letter it was April,  
And you were glad that it was spring weather,  
And that the sun shone out in turn with showers of rain._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BI-Y6yP1hAGGysFlUUrRhw3wEZO7oKbr/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**28\. Yet Another Poem About A Dying Child**

_Poets and parents say he cannot die  
So young, so tied to trees and stars..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DsfShLmQ7cMSukuotUX53GWd0Ef_oj-b/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**29\. Rocket Show (James K Baxter)**

_...For love grows like the crocus bulb in winter  
Hiding from snow and from itself the tender  
Green frond in embryo; but dies as rockets die.._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DsrAq_V4EWSw-Keo3RuUlIKq7vyvJ99x/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**30\. Where The Bee Sucks (William Shakespeare)**

_Where the bee sucks, there suck I:_  
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;  
There I couch when owls do cry.... 

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LrpbTBXT-i34O6kFjy_t3YQg7CtfPBoe/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *


	7. Chapter 7

**31\. There Are Blondes And Blondes (Raymond Chandler)**

_“There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare...._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ZmmYayj4hP_z5pMCQd6djI7476Quvzo/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**32\. Don’t Knock the Rawleigh’s Man (Vincent O’Sullivan)**

_Don't knock the Rawleigh's Man  
when he opens his case and offers you  
mixed spices, curry powder, chilblain  
ointment, Ready Relief, brilliantine,  
don't say Not now, don't think  
Piss off, but remember:  
think of a hill called Tibi Dabo  
behind Barcelona and the legend  
that up there Satan  
showed J.C. just what he was missing...._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ZtR-UYDvk4ztvoRge6c0FIBG3Iy6U5e/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

****33\. You Need To Get Up Early Morning** **

_When night haunts you think of this:  
The time of need and dreams must end..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-cbNEfiTNxgwU-HqTVRS3njq85tqk2gz/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**34\. Journey of the Magi (T. S. Eliott)**

_A cold coming we had of it,  
Just the worst time of year  
For a journey..._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-QjRIGi0XUvcPDmDBzdBDYeiHO-sA4yu/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *

**35\. Heemi (Hone Tuwhare)**

_No point now my friend in telling  
you my lady’s name.  
She wished us well: ordered wheels  
which spun my son and me like  
comets through the lonely night.  
You would have called her Aroha [loving-kindness]...._

* Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-NscLVI_yQNzzdcEsT1sokxSsWep4-aY/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) *


End file.
